It's the same elf chick from the LoTR that resists the temptation of theRing when frodo offered it. SHE is very old and very vain. She even states that with power, she would be a dark and terrible queen, beautiful and beloved and feared by all.

Other then that, she was also taller then all the men around her, Gandalf, Elrond, Soroman or whatever whom is gunna be all evil later.

Honestly, I didn't find her beautiful, I thought she was creepy looking. Elongated, too much white on her, sickly blonde hair, gah. Just made her seem alien.

And there were a few dwarven women with thin mutton chopes and beards at the begining. They were cute in their own right.

Try looking for the female Dwarves. They look and sound a lot like the Dwarf men.
(Hint: It's the beards)

They showed at least one dwarf woman in the movie. She had no beard.

There were several dwarven women shown at the start of the film, and they all had at least mutton chops.

I didn't find it uncomfortable the lack of female characters. It wouldn't be true to the book, or the setting. In that time in Middle Earth, women simply wouldn't be fighting, going on 'quests', etc. Though I personally think that Eowyn, Arwen and Galadriel are perfectly capable of kicking a** in their own right. razz

It didn't click until the way home after the movie but I did notice the lack of females mostly because it made me say to my husband "oh That's why Galadriel was shoved into the movie, So that there would be a female character." I probably wouldn't have noticed if they hadn't put her in the film, the elves annoy me and I was trying to think of what reason did the writers have to put her in the film. And I am not uncomfortable with this in the slightest.

I don't think the exclusion of a race or a gender in a movie is inherently sexist or racist, if it's subconscious.
Thinking about it now, maybe it could have been a sexist decision, but I don't think it's sexist not to put female characters in a story if the author just wants to write about men, necessarily. If the choice to exclude them was because women are weak or boring or whatever, then obviously that's a different thing, but I don't look at a book or movie and judge the preferences of the creators just on how many of one group of people are in it. Sometimes the story just fits right with certain people, sometimes writers are more comfortable writing about certain people. Who knows?

Also, like someone said before, sometimes it's nice just to fan over some cute guys.

The Hobbit is pretty great. But was anybody else a bit uncomfortable with the fact that there's only one named female character in the film (and none in the book, I think) and that she's written in a way that makes her main character trait 'being super beautiful'?

I know the film is based on a book that was written when there was no concern about women's representation in popular culture, so maybe that excuses the film? I don't know. It made me uncomfortable.

Otherwise, it's an excellent film, I think.

As a woman myself, I didn't feel uncomfortable at all. It's just the type of story. The characters are (speaking mainly of the dwarves) meant to be a bit burly and male. When you look at culture throughout many time periods you see the men being the ones going off to war, fighting the enemy, and generally in the "dangerous" roles. That's not to say that women can't be in those roles, but men seem to be the first choice and fit better in these role for a book/movie. Sometimes a story is better if the characters are mainly male, sometimes vice versa. It just depends on the story.